


Radioactive

by Dragunov



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Child Soldiers, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-11-29 04:58:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragunov/pseuds/Dragunov
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are the underground experiments at Baskerville. There are the hounds, and then, there are them. Born to be stronger, and smarter than normal humans. But then, it is an experiment, and some experiments are unsuccessful. </p><p>Sherlock Holmes is the only one who escapes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“You are, don’t you know.” Mycroft says, “Our most successful subject to date. Do sit, please.”

“I prefer to stand, sir.”

“At ease, then, at least.”

Mycroft taps a stack of folders to his dark wood desk, straightening them, before setting them flat, and pushing at the edges in good measure, until they are all perfectly perpendicular to his chair.

The blond boy watches, with the barest of smiles, or maybe that’s way his mouth rests, Mycroft can never quite tell. “At ease.” Mycroft says, again, and the boy’s shoulder’s relax, reluctantly, but with an inner tenseness. Like soft snow melting off ice. His hands clench behind his back, his feet move apart, exactly, precisely, instinctively; at ease.

Mycroft nods.

He flips opens the top folder so that it shows the first page. This seems like the next most natural progression, except that he already knows the page by heart. He’s memorized the whole folder. Each and every one. A photo of a blue eyed baby stares up at him solemnly, and beneath it’s pink fleshed pixels, a DNA codon table. It’s abnormal.

“Zulu.” He says.

“Sir.”

Mycroft leans back, leather chair creaking softly. “Alias?”

“Sebastian Moran, sir. Born in Killarney, son of Augustus Moran. Veteran. He manages a golf course. Mother died early on. Lung cancer. I’ve a sister, and a cat, named-“

“Good, good.” Mycroft clips, waving his hand dismissively. The boy falls silent, seems neither pleased nor displeased. His eyes are the coldest blue. All of them were born with blue eyes - but only Zulu’s remained so as he aged. The other’s eyes turned an inky black, and Mycroft wonders, occasionally, about Echo; the one that escaped, whether he still sees the world through blue, if he still sees. “All very good. As said, you’re our most successful subject to date. Strong, especially coordinated. Smart. You display a… healthy sense of subordination.”

Blue eyes blink at him slowly, a rate slower than any human should blink, like a predator transfixed, and Mycroft ought to be used to unblinking eyes by now, but his skin still goosebumps at the strangeness of it, the way deer will always freeze in front of headlights. He may not be scared of the boy, but his body is, somewhere neurons firing in terror. He hides it well beneath an implacable three piece suit.

The boy, Zulu, alias Sebastian Moran, is their most successful subject to date, their last subject. No detrimental deformations, no manifestations of psychological disorders. He could leave. Live in the real world. Fulfill a military career, the very purpose for which he was created. He has the potential for success. He could, but if presented the option. 

And lonely existence would await, normal humans always scared of him, and never quite understanding why.

Mycroft wonders about Echo, folder five. His finger finds it, caresses the binding.

“You are close to Foxtrot.” He says, a statement, and a question.

“Sir.”

“Describe your relationship.”

The boy startles, blinks fast, once, out of rhythm; and it startles Mycroft, who makes no motion, but notes, mentally, that there might be a bit more to this closeness than the handlers know. Zulu answers, blandly, “Of my brothers and sisters, I find his presence to be the most productive.” A light pause, and then. “He’s helping me advance my chemistry.” 

A lie, Mycroft can taste it, like a recipe with a little too much salt, but he knows if he asks the handlers for proof, it will be there, notebooks filled with chemistry problems, conversions and reactions. Foxtrot is not the type who helps, Zulu is not the type who takes help. He flips through a few pages of Zulu’s file, pretends to find what he’s looking for.

“I am told you refer to Foxtrot by a new name.” Mycroft asks, “Jim?”

And that cocky smile vanishes - so it’s not the natural musculature of his face - and becomes, instead, the barest of irritated frowns. Mycroft is immensely satisfied by this, and immensely intrigued.

“It’s his new name.”

“His alias is Richard Brook. His number is Foxtrot. He has no other name.”

A short, mechanical shrug. “It’s his new name.”

“I see. And when did this new name begin?”

The boy’s hands unfold from behind his back, coming to clench at his sides, thumbs aligned with uniform trouser seams. He stands, if possible, straighter than before, shifting almost liquid to the position of attention. “If you’ll forgive me, sir.” And his tone is the coiled tenseness, the potential success, the ice. A healthy sense of subordination. “I think you know the answer to that already.”

Since Echo escaped. 

Mycroft closes the file. “Dismissed.”

Sebastian Moran snaps a sharp salute, and exits the office.

——-

An armed handler escorts him back to the barracks, opening the big metal doors with an ID card; sees him through, leaves him alone. Sebastian hears the locking system close behind him, a complex series of loud clicks, each pinching at his nerves. The barracks look more like a school dormitory, though olive and beige and gray and lacking decoration. Metal, too. A meat locker. The common room is empty, and the whole building feels eerily quiet.

The building is two floors, with two subjects to every room. Sebastian takes the stairs two at a time, then walks calmly down the hall. His is the last room, labeled Yankee/Zulu; his wristband unlocks the door as soon as he touches the handle, but once inside, there’s no way to lock it again. Only handlers have the power to lock occupied rooms. Sebastian sighs, his head starting to pound with the sound of clicking locks. He flings open the door, and finds Jim.

Jim, paused mid-pace, like a model of the missing link, his shoulder’s hunched and fingers twitching in front of his chest; fingers typing at a keyboard that is not really there. He turns to the closing door, responds to the stimuli, but his black eyes are faded, distant.

He’s so small, Sebastian invariably catches himself thinking, so small and frail for a soldier-breed. But small can be strategic, and frailty can be deceiving. 

“Fox?” Sebastian says, and watches the way Jim’s mouth works around the name, long before he hears it, lips curling to a snarl. He snaps back to focus so suddenly, a tiny violent tremor down his spine, and he is a different person altogether. Fallen angel, to snake. Sebastian wants to rub the pain from his temples, to take a nap, but he stands still. “What are you doing here?”

“You programmed my wristband to allow access, a week ago.” 

No. “Oh.” That never happened. “Where’s-” everyone else.

“Demonstrating hand to hand for the Director. I’m surprised they didn’t send you, actually; maybe they’re afraid you’ll make everyone else look silly.” He’s small, the smallest, and pale and skinny and his face is insomnia bruised. But. He says, with a smile, “Richard Brook was left in the barracks. He’s not ready, and might be an embarrassment. I’ll be expected to speak fifteen languages later, or recite pi, or show them my cancer rats, or who cares.”

“Oh.” Sebastian says.

“All’s well that ends well, though. I saw some mistakes in your chem work. Let me show you how the Rydberg formula really works.”

A tall bookshelf looms in the corner, and Jim steps to it. Sebastian steals a pen from the cup on his roommates desk, and follows, crowding Jim’s personal space, standing as close as fictional lovers stand, in those films their handlers show occasionally, on Friday nights. That’s what the real world is like. Sebastian finally touches his aching forehead. Jim slides a notebook from the shelf, props it in front of them, opens to a blank page. He accepts the pen from Sebastian, and launches into a lecture on Bohr atom energy conversion. He says, “Look, energy change when an electron in the n=3 energy state to the n=1 energy state of a hydrogen atom-“

He writes: /WHAT HAPPENED?/

There is a camera hidden on top of the bookshelf. This is it’s blind spot. 

Sebastian takes the pen back, writes: /CHECK UP/. He locks eyes with Jim, and this is the only lock he likes, a lock where Jim owns the key, and he mouths ‘nothing. Nothing happened.’ Jim is still talking, steady, with perfectly calculated natural pauses, and he says

“-is -1.938 x 10-18 Joules. The negative value means the atom loses this energy during the transition-“

as he wraps a wrist around the back of Sebastian’s neck. He pulls Sebastian forward, swiftly, at the same time shoving the point of their pen beneath his ribs. Sebastian grips Jim’s shoulder, his mouth gaping with a silent gasp. His headache is gone. Jim wrenches the pen free, and stabs him again.

“Do you understand, Zulu?”

Sebastian swallows thickly. A thin river of blood is flowing warm down his side, soaking into his trousers. Dark blue, it will hide the stain well. Jim’s warm breath brushes his jaw. When he takes too long to respond, Jim twists the pen inside him. He feels his legs weaken a little, as if he would like to kneel. “Yeah, Fox. I see my mistake. I’ll pay more attention next time.”

The pen is gone. Jim releases him, and tears their writing from the notebook, and the page after it, as well, so there are no traceable impressions left. He shreds the two slips of paper into smaller pieces, and eats them, piece by piece, after licking blood off the pen. He starts to write formula, a chemistry problem, n=3 energy state to the n=1 energy state, hand moving fast.

When he’s finished, he passes it to Sebastian, who wanders to his desk, sits down, stares at it, unblinking. The wound will heal. Faster than any human wound would heal. Jim is humming a song, Staying Alive, he’s singing it in Arabic and then Japanese, and German, when his wristband beeps shrilly. 

“Cancer rats, it is, then!” He exclaims, excited, genuinely excited, doing a little dance to the door. “See ya, Seb.”

He’s gone.

“Yeah, see ya, Jim.”


	2. Chapter 2

He spends the first month after his escape surviving in the dense forest around their base. 

This is extremely foolish. 

The forest is dense, but by no means wilderness: a short enough distance from end to end that the hounds, working as an intelligent pack, can cover it once a night. But only at night, or else the locals will take notice. And that is his advantage.

During the day there are no soldiers searching in the woods, and so during the day he works, he travels, traps squirrels, and covers his tracks; slogging through streams where he can, cold water soaking his navy blue trousers to the knee, uncomfortable, miserable, but confusing his scent. Instinct screams at him that this is wrong, that a soldier stuck in enemy territory should sleep during the day, and slink about at night. His instinct is right, but not now; he fights it down, feels like a snake with legs. Soldiers adapt. Soldiers evolve.

And that is his advantage. At night he steals from the locals, a ghost in the corner of their eye. Tiny scraps of food from the trash can of a quaint inn, pieces of clothing, if possible, if careful. Nothing sooner missed than forgotten. Then, he finds a safe place to sleep. As if he is playing a great big game of hide and seek. Never sleep the same place twice, in theory, is much more difficult in practice.

The hounds can not come here, to the inn, which is well lit and busy with passing people. Its bar is popular small town entertainment. This place is as dangerous for him as it is for the hounds, but he accepts the risk. Spotted by a local, and dragged back, is far better than savaged by a hound, and dragged back. His heart tilts at the thought. 

But his feet are firm on the ground, as he runs from the wood's edge to a shadowed side of the inn. A few short bushes line this wall, surrounded by lovingly planted little white flowers, wilting fast with the season. For a second, red and orange and yellow and all the warmth of firelight spills from the inn window and brushes his face and then he is burrowing behind it all.

Conversation in the bar continues at a muffled constant, and his breathing calms. He shivers, wraps his gangly arms around his legs, body curled tight like a pill bug beneath a rock. Soon, a couple of weeks, soon, and he'll be able to see his breath in the winter cold. Then, snow will come. His navy uniform, built for heated buildings, for the barracks and classrooms of the base, is worn flimsy by dirt and water and tree bark. Worthless against snow. 

He's scared. 

He buries his face between his knees. This is the fourth time he's slept behind the inn's bushes. Extremely foolish. He shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be in Baskerville anymore. A good soldier would be long gone after a month. Were he the type to underestimate his enemy, he would almost consider it clever: he was born to be a good soldier, surely this is the last place they expect him to stay. 

But he is not the type to underestimate his enemy, and he knows, that the Director knows, 

that he is still here.

He's not scared of the cold. His mind can handle the cold, but his body is thin, shivering, living off scraps. He will slow, and slow, and slow, and they will find him, or they will find his body, slowed to a final halt. He should leave the forest, start making his way east. He's studied the maps so that they are a piece of him, roads like the blue lines on his wrists. But the last time he tried, he walked as far as Childe's Tomb, that wretched stone cross standing tall over the moor, the grave of a hunter, and he turned back, vomited, sick. That night he slept as near to the base as he could without being caught, listening to the soft displacement of leaves as the hounds prowled beneath him, and he perched in the treetops, turned toward the flickering lights of Baskerville Military Base.

Home.

Trained to survive torture, battle, espionage, to survive the harshest desert storm. But homesickness hits him like black death.

He's seen London in movies. He suspects that the movies, being art, are all lies. This is the real world, yet his life, since escaping the base, seems unreal. He could walk to the local police station, a very short walk away. He could cry, tell them his name is Holmes and that he is lost. And the Director would appear, from the back of a shiny black car, standing wretched and tall over the moor; an umbrella curled in one hand, the other held out for him to take. Armed with a fairytale about being brothers, being so worried, mummy in such a state. Come home.

To the base.

He would be warm, he would be safe. He would be back to the only world he knows as real.

And it would be all lies. 

Back to doors that lock behind him, to a little boy with dark eyes and blood on his arm, to whatever punishment awaits runaways, traitors. And he's not scared of the cold, he's not scared of dying, or of the punishment if he returns. He's scared of the little boy's dark eyes, and, he realizes, with a sharp stab of disgust, he's scared of the Director's disappointed frown. If he returns, he returns a failure. 

He hears voices from the bar like a lullaby. He can tell, though it is never said, that the bartender is cheating on his boyfriend. With the tour guide. He can tell a lot from what is said and left unsaid, from what is worn, and what is hidden with make up, from posture, and the way people lick their lips, look left or right. Foxtrot finds this hilarious, changing habits constantly, to trick him. The Director calls it Inductive Reasoning, says that with practice he will be able to identify each step leading to his conclusions. At the moment, it comes to him like sixth sense. He knows that the bartender is cheating on his boyfriend. He's not sure how he knows.

But he falls asleep to the bartender cheating on his boyfriend between words, to the locals scaring a stranger with their stories of a giant hound, and a ghost boy who haunts the moor. Childe's Tomb turns into Mycroft Holmes. The hounds, massive, genetically altered military dogs, grab a hold of Foxtrot and, foaming at the mouth, eat him alive. The foam is pink. Echo is screaming, but his scream is snowy wind, and silent. He blinks, and wakes to a dark moor before dawn. 

Another day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title change, since I decided to add more to this story. Sorry for any typos, I'm terrified of my own writing so I don't tend to read it.
> 
> This is my first time trying to write Sherlock... I mean, it's a version of him. Uh-


End file.
